RELATED LINK:

TROY >> A flotilla of paper boats began a three-week journey down the Hudson River Saturday, leaving from Troy’s marina. The boats are bound for New York City, where they will join in the Peoples’ Climate March on Sept. 21.

The project, SeaChange: We All Live Downstream, is an initiative of a Brooklyn-based boatbuilding collective, Mare Liberum, and global climate change activism network, 350.org.

The March coincides with the United Nations Climate Summit on September 23, where world leaders will meet to address climate change and discuss actions to reduce emissions and prepare for a global legal agreement in 2015.

“I think that raising awareness of the impact of extracting carbon, sequestered carbon that’s been in our ground for hundreds of millions of years and transporting that into our atmosphere… I mean the science is in, we know that this is having a fantastic and maybe irreversible impact on the composition of our atmosphere and hence changing our climate,” said Yuri Gorby, a professor of geomicrobiology and bioprocess engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who came to see the flotilla off. “These efforts, funny as they may be, are helping to raise awareness for the general public to make our own decisions about what we should do moving forward.”

Advertisement

“Climate change relates to everything,” said Daniel Morrissey, a local activist with Organization for a Free Society. “It is the most applicable problem to every different type of issue that’s happening throughout the world.”

The fleet made a stop in Albany Saturday night, and will also visit 13 ports of call, including Catskill, Hudson, Kingston, and Newburgh, during their 160-mile course, culminating in a tour around the island of Manhattan and a boat bloc gathering on the East River.

Troy is a fitting place for the flotilla’s launch for a few reasons. The paperboats themselves are part of the Collar City’s history, as Elisha Waters and Sons was the largest producers of boats in the U.S. in the 19th century. Two of the boats in the flotilla were constructed at Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside over two weeks using manilla paper, shellac and wood glue, in a similar style as Waters and Sons.

Troy’s location on the Hudson River also brings risk of rising sea levels. But some local organizations, like Transition Troy and Solarize Troy, are working to do their part to reduce emissions and build a sustainable community.

“I think it’s really relevant that they’re hitting all these little post-industrial cities along the Hudson River,” said Kristin Diotte, an architectural designer at Re4orm Architecture. “When I think about downtown areas, and the refocus on dense living — whether you call it a sustainable community, or a resilient community — it’s going to be pretty dense and walkable, and that’s been the design in these post-industrial cities as part of their revival.”

The fleet’s stop in Albany was met with a rally against the virtual pipeline. The transport of crude oil has been a controversial issue in Albany, as public housing developments near the Port of Albany are subject to pollution and possible explosions.